Majority of Supply Chain Leaders Plan to Embrace New Technology to Overcome Persistent Challenges: TrueCommerce Survey

Most supply chain leaders plan to adopt advanced technologies such as supply chain management (SCM) systems, electronic data interchange (EDI) tools, and cloud-based ERP solutions to overcome many of today’s day-to-day obstacles, according to a study from TrueCommerce Inc.

“There’s no doubt that businesses are trying to evolve,” says Ryan Tierney, VP of product management at TrueCommerce. “As things change within the market, businesses are making advancements: They are trying to be faster, be more accurate, and improve their efficiencies. To do these things, they need to control costs, attract and retain talent and bring in new customers. Those are critical to operations and ongoing.”

Key takeaways:

•  In 2023, business leaders pinpointed three major challenges that impact the supply chain including cost control (37%), acquiring new customers (34%) and attracting and retaining talent (33%). In 2024, these same three challenges remain with cost control (35%) and retaining talent (35%) listed as the most important followed by acquiring new customers (30%).
• Leaders are most concerned about three factors related to supply chain disruptions: price changes (45%), labor shortages (34%) and cyberthreats (31%).
• The survey found 95% of companies face order management challenges. Some of the top challenges include inventory discrepancies (47%), returns/reverse logistics (46%) and volume fluctuations (39%). 
• 49% of company leaders managing supply chains are worried about cyber threats, 43% are concerned about currency fluctuations and exchange rates, and 35% experience quality control issues and language differences.
• Leaders are dealing with mandates surrounding product/quality regulations (52%), tariffs and import/export restrictions (51%) and environmental regulations (42%).
• At the top of the list of strategies was adopting new technology (73%), while over half (64%) plan to diversify suppliers and/or increase safety stock (57%). The research also uncovered that nearly 60% are investing in SCM and EDI tools to mitigate supply chain delays.
• In 2024, 71% of business leaders anticipate spending more on supply chain software than they did in 2023, with a specific focus on investing in new ERPs, with 70% planning to invest this year. Those surveyed shared the reasons behind these investments, including improved reporting and analytics, uptime improvements and better integration capabilities.
• In 2023, business leader priorities were to achieve sales increases (39%), improve order processing accuracy (33%) and improve resiliency (28%). In 2024, the biggest priority remains to increase sales (34%). However, when comparing these goals and challenges listed earlier, the two don’t align. For example, practices like improving workflow visibility, reducing time to market, boosting productivity, and automating processes, are steps that could improve cost control, but they are low on business leaders’ list of goals.

“A large portion of this investment could be due to the acceleration toward the cloud—replacement of legacy on-premises ERP with cloud ERP,” adds Tierney. “With the cloud, connecting and integrating your systems to bring visibility across different aspects of your supply chain is much easier. Every day, we see customers using legacy solutions decide to move to the cloud for efficiency. It’s a big investment, but they become more efficient. It also helps mitigate costs.”